We can all agree Maya is quite a remarkable program. From creating particle simulations to modeling a character, Maya can do just about anything in CG. Maya was clearly built for a lot of different artists, but not for any one of them specifically. As a character animator, Maya can serve most of your needs, but the program wasn’t built for character animators specifically, so doing simple tasks such as checking arcs or creating parent constraints can get complex and time-consuming. Lucky for us though, artists around the world have created numerous plug-ins, scripts, and tools to help Maya animators out. Below we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite tools that will help make Maya a happier place to animate and speed up your animation workflow. The best part: a majority of the tools we list are completely free to download today.

1. AnimBot | Subscriptions starting at $60/year (Free for current AnimSchool students)

First and foremost, the plug-in professional and student animators alike swear by: AnimBot. Tailored specifically for animators, AnimBot is filled with 150 tools that make animating faster and easier. Some of its notable tools include the tween machine, retiming tools and selection sets. It is an essential plug-in for any Maya animator and absolutely worth the cost. To keep animators from getting overwhelmed by the myriad of tools, there are pop-up gif tutorials built into AnimBot that make it quick and easy to find out what any of its 150 tools do.  

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2. ZV Parent Master | Free

If you’ve ever felt lost in the world of Maya constraints – fret no longer! ZV Parent Master is a plug-in designed to make constraining objects simple and painless. With a few simple clicks, you can attach, detach and then reattach an object to a new object with ease. Retiming your attachments and detachments are as simple as shifting a couple keys, and for more complicated scenes, ZV Parent Master also has a colored timeline to visually show you what to and when an object is constrained. Currently offered for free, this tool is a must-have for animators.

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3. bhGhost | Free

One thing many 3D animators forget is that despite the fancy 3D models that can be tumbled around freely in space, 3D animated shots are viewed on flat 2D screens. Ultimately, you are animating for the camera. In this way, classic 2D hand-drawn animation isn’t very different from 3D animation. With this in mind, tracking arcs and spacing on a 3D character can seem complicated compared to 2D drawings, where the spacing is obvious. bhGhost helps us bridge this gap by creating a way to transform your 3D model into a simple outline to help track spacing and timing. With this plug-in, you select your character’s geometry, or whatever you want to track — whether it be a hand, a foot, or the entire character — and you ghost it. What sets bhGhost apart, is that it doesn’t simply onion skin your entire geometry. Instead, it creates an outline that reads as 2D to make it look like you’re tracking a simple drawing instead of a complex, 3D rig. The plug-in allows you to change line thickness, color, and even add sphere trackers to the geometry to see parts of the body as a simple bouncing ball to track spacing. If you find that you have trouble tracking arcs and spacing with only your eye in Maya, bhGhost is definitely worth a download.

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4. World Space 2 | $15

World Space 2 is a set of advanced animation tools for manipulating animation and switching between world, local, and parent spaces. First off, this tool is yet another way to constrain objects to each other. In this case, you put child objects into parent space and the tool will create temporary controls for you to animate with. Once you’re done, you can simply bake down the animation and have complete control over your character’s original controls again. In addition, utilizing World Space 2 to put part of a character, such as an arm or head, into world space is a great way to do a final polish pass on animation since controlling how an arc will look to the camera in world space is much easier than in object space. In world space, you can fine-tune an arc by translating the head or limb more precisely. World Space 2 also includes a number of other features that allow you to create simple on-the-fly rigs for props, manipulate which channels you want space switching on, in addition to tools for creating paths and copying animation. 

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5. AnimSchool Picker | Free

The AnimSchool Picker allows you to select and control components within Maya, just like the pickers they use at the big studios. With the AnimSchool Picker, animators can easily select rig controls without the clutter of NURBS curves controllers in the viewport. There’s ample opportunity to customize your picker from colors, names, sizes, and alignment. Navigating the picker is simple and allows users to zoom, pan, and click and drag to select multiple controls at once. In addition to controllers, the picker can be used to select geometry and other components in your scene.  Once you’ve created your custom picker, save it and reuse it for other characters by simply changing the namespace. The best part is that the AnimSchool Picker is free to anyone! I repeat you do NOT need to be an AnimSchool student to use this picker, however, students receive the perk of being able to use a number of pre-made AnimSchool Pickers included with their character rigs.

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6. AnimPolish | Free (Basic Version)

7. FCM_Hider | Free

8. Convert Rotation Order | Free

9. Studio Library | Free

10. Aaron Koresell Scripts | Free

As an animator, learning how to retime your keys in a shot is an absolute must. If the character is moving too fast, you need to add frames. If the character is moving slow, you need to remove frames. Before you know it, you are retiming your keys left and right. There are various ways to retime your keys depending on the situation. 

Maya Timeline

Moving One Key

Moving Multiple Keys

If there is a section of your shot that you want to move, you can select multiple keys together of that section to move those together.

Make sure you are moving the keys by clicking on < >, anywhere else and it would deselect the keys.

Resizing The Keys

Midframe keys create a lot of problems in animation and rendering so make sure your keys are exactly on frames like 12.0, not 12.34.

Even after the snap, sometimes the keys have issues in graph editor with tangents so it is extremely important to use this one with caution.

Graph Editor

If you are an animator who uses graph editor a lot, selecting keys and moving those must have become part of your muscle memory by now. I for one am so used to moving keys in GE that I could not even recall how I was doing it. I had to do it slowly to make these gifs. 

Left Mouse Button + Drag to select keys.

Middle Mouse Button + Shift to move the keys.

The shift key helps you to move keys horizontally (0 degrees) and vertically (90 degrees) from the position of the key. You cannot move keys diagonally. This helps you to preserve the value of the keys that otherwise get changed and can cause a headache.

See! Values of the keys get changed. Better use Shift.

Dope Sheet

Not many animators use the dope sheet which is a shame because it is pretty dope (get it?). The dope sheet looks like this.

It shows all the keyed objects on the left side and their keys on the right side. It gives a very clear picture of the whole shot in terms of frames and makes it easy to move those without messing up any value or tangent arrangement of the keys.

Look at the following .gif! So neat…

Left Mouse Button on DopeSheet summary

Middle Mouse Button +Drag to move keys.

However, the dope thing is that you can move frames of one object on its own as well. Like this…

This is not all, you can move selected frames of objects you want, as well.

Left Mouse Button + Drag to select keys

Middle Mouse Button to move.

You should definitely try using the dope sheet more.

Mel Scripts

Here are the two most basic scripts for retiming keys:

timeSliderEditKeys addInbetween;

timeSliderEditKeys removeInbetween;

If you want to add more frames between your keys, this is the easiest way. 

Click the Left Mouse Button to add frames to your heart’s content, but let’s not go overboard alright? 

We’ve compiled a legendary list of 10 books that most in the animation industry would agree should be on every animator’s shelf.

ANIMATING CHARACTERS

The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams

This is the book that every animator will tell you that you need on your bookshelf. It is essentially the bible to animation. Williams covers all the basic principles of animation — timing, spacing, overlap, anticipation — and breaks it all down through hand-drawn animations and timing charts so you can see, frame by frame, how to animate. This comprehensive, easy-to-follow guide covers everything you need to know to get started in animation and serves as a great reference for experienced animators as well. Richard Williams is an Academy Award-winning director best known for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair

This 1994 classic by renowned animator, Preston Blair, continues to serve today as an exemplary guide to creating cartoony animation. This book is a compilation of Blair’s many how-to books from over the years. Blair covers all the basics of animation and explains how to utilize these principles to develop a character in addition to animating with dialogue and creating complex movements. 

ACTING 

Acting for Animators by Ed Hooks 

An industry-leading acting instructor for animators worldwide, Ed Hook’s book Acting for Animators demonstrates how to utilize basic acting theory to create believable characters with genuine performances in animation. Hook provides a variety of examples and exercises to help animators breathe life into their characters.

Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen

One of the most popular books on acting, Uta Hagens Respect for Acting introduces a series of questions that an actor must ask themselves in order to define who a character is and how they would most realistically act in that situation. Hagen makes it clear that what you do and say are the most telling characteristics of a character and should be closely considered by the actor, or in this case, the animator when crafting a performance.

Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes by Walk Stanchfield

Walt Stanchfield was a long-time Disney animator who worked on hits such as The Jungle Book and The Aristocats. In the 1970s, Stanchfield teamed up with fellow animator, Eric Larson and created a training program for new Disney animators. This 2 volume set of books is a compilation of Stanchfields lecture notes and remains one of the only drawing books around that is aimed specifically at animation. His lectures are in no particular order, so you can begin reading at any part of the book! He emphasizes that drawing is more about thinking rather than drawing technique. 

FORCE: Dynamic Life Drawing by Michael Matessi

AnimSchool art teacher Mike Matessi’s book shows how to use rhythm, shape, and line to bring any subject to life. Filled with detailed, instructive illustrations, Matisse demonstrates how to create dynamic, realistic poses – a key skill when animating.

The Nine Old Men by Andreas Dejas

A master animator himself, Andreas Dejas was mentored by the infamous Nine Old Men during his early days at Disney. In his book, Dejas provides a thoughtful analysis of each of the Nine Old Men’s techniques, work, and thought processes in an effort to shape your approach to character animation. 

The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston

Written by two of Disney’s legendary Nine Old Men, the Illusion of Life began as a guide to the principles of animation but evolved into a thorough history of Disney and the evolution of animation around the world as the medium was first created and explored.

Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive by David Levy

Award-winning, animation director, David Levy, provides an in-depth guide to the inner-workings of the animation industry. Levy interviewed leading names in the industry — including Steven Hillenburg (creator of SpongeBob SquarePants), Teddy Newton (character designer on The Incredibles), John R. Dilworth (creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog), and many other working professionals —  to get their insight on creating a portfolio, networking and making the leap from working for others to pitching and selling. The second edition of Levy’s career guide is set for release this upcoming March filled with interviews from current industry insiders.

Draw Stronger: Self-Care for Cartoonists and Other Visual Artists by Kriota Willberg

Published in 2018, this book is a newer book in our collection that is fun, simple, and useful for anyone who does art for a living. Written in the form of a comic strip, Draw Stronger is a guide to taking care of yourself when working creatively and sitting at a desk eight hours a day. Willberg gives any artist a simple, yet informative guide to take care of their body and mind while ensuring they keep up with their craft.

For more such tips and tricks, visit www.animschool.edu